This report-builder interface is a product of the Centre for International Economic Studies (CIES) at The University of Adelaide.
The Database of Distortions to Agricultural Incentives is a product of The World Bank.

That project has produced a core database of Nominal Rates of Assistance to producers, or NRAs, together with a set of Consumer Tax Equivalents, or CTEs, for farm products and a set of Relative Rates of Assistance to farmers accounting for 95% of global GDP and agricultural production in75 focus countries.

This report-builder interface is a product of the Centre for International Economic Studies (CIES) at The University of Adelaide.
The Database of Distortions to Agricultural Incentives is a product of the World Bank’s project “Distortions to Agricultural Incentives”.

That project has produced a core database of Nominal Rates of Assistance to producers, or NRAs, together with a set of Consumer Tax Equivalents, or CTEs, for farm products and a set of Relative Rates of Assistance to farmers accounting for 95% of global GDP and agricultural production in75 focus countries.

Citation:

Kym Anderson and Ernesto Valenzuela, "Estimates of Global Distortions to Agricultural Incentives, 1955 to 2007", World Bank, Washington DC, October 2008, at http://www.worldbank.org/agdistortions.

Comments about this report-builder are welcome.

Please contact

Dr. Ernesto Valenzuela
Lecturer and Research Fellow
School of Economics
University of Adelaide
Adelaide SA 5005 Australia

Research community’s perception of this database:

“ The World Bank database that is presented in Anderson and Valenzuela 2008 is one of the major accomplishments on agricultural distortions throughout the world. This database will provide fertile ground for future research work that will help promote economic growth. The factual foundation for agricultural support and protection will now be understood by both academic researchers and policymakers as a result of this publication. Congratulations on a job well done.”

“This database should make it much easier for policy makers and analysts to understand the impacts of agricultural support and protection and (who knows?) to identify mistakes and to do things better in the future. A Terrific project”

P. GallagherAustralian consultant on trade and public policy

“I have great respect for Kym Anderson and Ernesto Valenzuela’s accomplishments in compiling this data set”

Prof. S. BlockInternational Economics Fletcher SchoolTufs University

Database of Distortions to Agricultural Incentives, 1955 to 2007

Kym Anderson and Ernesto Valenzuela

with the assistance of Johanna Croser, Esteban Jara, Marianne

Kurzweil, Signe Nelgen, Francesca de Nicola, and Damiano Sandri

October 2008 (Revised April 2009)

The World Bank’s research project on “Distortions to Agricultural Incentives” www.worldbank.org/agdistortions has produced a core database of Nominal Rates of Assistance to producers, or NRAs, together with a set of Consumer Tax Equivalents, or CTEs, for farm products and a set of Relative Rates of Assistance to farmers in75 focus countries. Financial assistance from World Bank Trust Funds, particularly from DfID and BNPP, is gratefully acknowledged, as are the contributions of each of authors of spreadsheets for the 75 country case studies.

Methodology details are available in the World Bank Policy Research Paper No.4612, April 2008. wps4612

This data report builder also provides partial equilibrium indicators of trade (Trade Reduction Index) and welfare reductions (Welfare Reduction Index) to government interventions in agricultural markets. These indicators recently developed by Anderson, Crosser and Lloyd (2009) from the trade restrictiveness index literature that Anderson and Neary pioneered during the 1990s, use the NRA and CTE estimates for each focus country in the core database, along with value of production and consumption at undistorted prices for each product. The World Bank Policy Research Paper No.4864 and 4865 serve as the methodology papers for this extra database.

The vast majority of the world’s poorest households depend on farming for their livelihood. In the past their earnings were often depressed by pro-urban and anti-agricultural biases of their own country’s policies. While progress has been made over the past two decades by numerous developing countries in reducing those policy biases, many trade-reducing price distortions remain intersectorally as well as within the agricultural sector of low-, middle- and high-income countries.

This project, in seeking to understand the extent, effects of and reasons behind that transformation, began by compiling new estimates of price distortions over the past half century. National country studies were undertaken in more than 50 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe’s transition economies. They were supplemented with similar estimates and analytical narratives of policy trends in 20 high-income countries. Together those countries account for more than 90 percent of the value of global agricultural output. Working Paper versions of the national studies, and the associated national spreadsheets that were drawn on to generate the core global dataset, can be accessed from www.worldbank.org/agdistortions

Anderson, K. and E. Valenzuela (2008), “Estimates of Global Distortions to Agricultural Incentives, 1955 to 2007”, World Bank, Washington DC, October, available on the Database page at www.worldbank.org/agdistortions.